[SOLVED] Network goes to network 2 and my ethernet connections fails to connect to the internet.

[Miknoboes]

I live in a house with 4 other college housemates so our current setup is:
2 ethernet cables connected to our router. One of the ethernet cables goes straight into one of our housemate's computer and the other ethernet slot is connected to an ethernet switch which is then further connected to my pc, my roomates pc, and a wifi extender that I have right next to my computer for smartphone internet usage.

I used to have my laptop connected to one of the ethernet cables from the switch but have stopped using it since I built a new pc very recently. I switched over the ethernet from my laptop to the desktop pc. The problem with my desktop pc is that occasionally, the ethernet connection, which is just listed as "Network," switches to "Network 2" and does not connect to the internet or let me play online games/ connect to Discord.

When the network switches to network 2 , the only working fix that I know of is to do a network reset and then restart my desktop or to manually find Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller in device manager under network adapters and uninstall the drivers and then restart my computer which then it goes back to the regular network with normal internet connection.

Both my roommate and I get this problem and we have no idea how to fix this issue. i dont know if this information will help, but we found that we have no idea when our computers go to network 2 and we both found that this happens regardless of the other person's internet connectivity. sometimes only one of us has connection to the working network, sometimes both of us have working internet and other times both of us do not have a working network.

We found no pattern as to whose computer is connected to the dreadful network 2. Another thing to add is that our ethernet switch is connected to each of our PCs, and a wireless range extender. We found out that regardless of who may or may not be connected to network 2, the wifi extender is alwasy running well and our phones have access to reliable internet.

Another thing to add is that my mobo on my personal computer does not have access to wifi and I am just relying on the ethernet connection for internet. When I was using my laptop, the ethernet was working normally and I never stumbled upon this "network 2" issue at all.

This issue has started for the both of us since either my new pc or since we got the new extender. One final thing to add is that our third housemate who has his computer connected directly to the router and not through a switch has never had this network 2 issue at all. Does anyone have a fix to this at all?

 

[kanewolf]

"Network 2" makes it sound like you have a second DHCP server somewhere. DHCP is a "who ever answers first" protocol. So if you have multiple DHCP servers, it is not deterministic which will respond first. When you get connected Network 2 you need to open a cmd.exe window and run ipconfig /all command. That will give you the IP address of the DHCP server. That might help identify where the problem is.